National Fortune Game

Biodata

Background

The National Fortune Game appeared a year before the story’s opening in 4040. Humanity’s excessive resource extraction and waste production had destabilized Sky Blue Star’s ecosystem, causing increasingly frequent disasters and placing humanity at risk of extinction. The game offered countries a means of recovering resources and reversing environmental damage, while imposing further devastation on those whose representatives failed 1.

Before its appearance, Sky Blue Star had more than 400 independent countries. Only 200 remained a year later; the others had been destroyed by disasters and ferocious beasts associated with their defeats 8.

Participation and Rules

Selection and the Silver Ring

• Compulsory selection: The game randomly selects national representatives, called Masters or challengers. Selection cannot be refused or escaped 1 2.
• Silver Ring: Every human aged eighteen to sixty received a silvery-white wrist mark when the game appeared. Each mark carries a unique Master identification number and provides messaging, livestreaming, and summoning functions 2.
• Automatic transportation: Selected challengers are transported into the instance at the announced time, even if they are asleep 2.
• Returning victors: A surviving winner continues into the next round and summons a new Heroic Spirit, guaranteed to be stronger than their previous one 1 10.
• Ordinary Masters: Summoning a Heroic Spirit does not normally grant its abilities to the Master 3 12.

Survival and Victory Conditions

Instance Layout and Hazards

• Starting positions: Challengers begin at the map’s outer edges. Exceptionally unlucky participants may appear inside a beast’s territory, where survival is extremely unlikely 5.
• Converging routes: The map is described as circular, with all challengers advancing toward its center 4.
• Threats: Instances contain ferocious beasts, mutant beasts, natural disasters, and hostile competitors 2.
• Forced confrontation: Mist City’s central plaza provides no fog or buildings to conceal challengers, bringing the survivors together for a final battle 23.
• Alliances: Challengers can cooperate against stronger opponents. Such coalitions had already killed a three-time consecutive winner before Lin Xiaoran entered the game 18 19.

Heroic Spirit Summoning

Standard Mechanics

Each Master summons a Heroic Spirit to help them win. Summons receive information about the game automatically, but retain their own personalities and judgment 2 3 10.

• Random selection: No reliable method of choosing a particular Heroic Spirit is publicly known 2.
• Cultural connections: The National Fortune Analysis Bureau finds that most summons relate to their country’s history and culture, but this pattern does not allow it to control the results 27.
• Independent judgment: Heroic Spirits can refuse their Masters’ commands; Masters cannot simply compel obedience 14.
• Summoning living people: Issho was alive aboard a warship when summoned. His home world remains paused until his return 4.
• Death protection: A Heroic Spirit’s death inside the game does not kill the original person in their own world 4.
• Victory incentives: Heroic Spirits also receive rewards for helping their Masters win 4 10.
• Escape restriction: When Madara attempts to leave the game, his power is sealed and he becomes unable to move 29.

Lin Xiaoran’s Exception

Lin Xiaoran’s Strongest Summoning System integrates with and modifies her summoning mechanism. Its functions are separate from the game’s normal benefits 2 3.

• It summons characters from fictional media, including anime, novels, films, television, and games 3 27.
• It allows Lin Xiaoran to draw and permanently retain abilities from her summons, unlike ordinary Masters 2 3 12.
• Her documented summons are Fujitora Issho in Mist City and Madara Uchiha in the Scorching Sea of Sand 2 29.
• Foreign viewers accuse her of cheating after seeing her use gravity powers, but the game issues no elimination notification in response 32.

Scoring and Rankings

Victory determines the baseline national fortune reward, while the winner’s accumulated points determine how high the rewards can rise. Points come from killing beasts, monsters, and competing challengers 4.

Point Values

• Rank identification: Every challenger can identify a ferocious beast’s rank 10.
• Live leaderboard: Challengers can check the instance’s points ranking; dead participants’ names turn black 5.
• First-kill bonus: Lin Xiaoran and Issho’s first F-rank beast kill earns five points and an F-rank treasure chest 5.
• Historical strategy: Most challengers initially prioritize survival over hunting. One past winner did nothing while every opponent died to beasts or disasters 4.

Documented Records

Rewards and Penalties

Ten-Thousandfold Returns

Supplies obtained in the game generate ten-thousandfold returns for the challenger’s country. Penalties likewise manifest on a national scale, including deployments of ten thousand hostile creatures 1 16.

• Treasure chests: Chests are guarded by beasts and can be found in their lairs 3 8.
• Ordinary supply crates: Provide necessities such as water, instant noodles, sausages, tents, and quilts 8 41.
• Broader rewards: Possible national benefits include resources, energy sources, technological blueprints, restored health, and additional lifespan 1.

Victory Rewards

Heroic Spirit Rewards

• Fujitora Issho: Receives a perfect rating and the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception after helping Lin Xiaoran win. The reward restores his sight and enables him to perceive the “death” of things 26.

Failure Penalties

• Country L: Pang Yun’s defeat results in lifespan deductions and the deployment of ten thousand Burst Bears 1.
• Country R: Tanaka Ning and Kuchisake-onna’s deaths cause all residents to age five years and ten thousand Kuchisake-onna to appear throughout the country 16.
• Penalty severity: Higher-ranked defeated challengers can incur less severe penalties, allowing weakened countries to endure additional losses 10.
• National destruction: Repeated failures can overwhelm a country’s defenses and erase it entirely 1 8.

Documented Rounds

Livestreaming and National Response

Broadcast Features

• Age restriction: Only Silver Ring holders aged eighteen to sixty can see the livestreams 16.
• Cross-national viewing: Audiences visit other countries’ challenger streams and exchange comments 5 6 18.
• Broadcast control: Lin Xiaoran can turn her livestream off, allowing private conversations with Issho 12.
• Camera movement: The broadcast shifts to an aerial view to show the scale of the A-rank Deadly Poison Spider King’s territory 20.
• Technical stability: Streams show no latency or stuttering even when large numbers of viewers flood them simultaneously 18.
• No external intervention: People outside the game cannot interfere with events inside the instance 18.

National Fortune Bureau

Country L establishes the National Fortune Survival Game Analysis, Defense, and Countermeasures Bureau to study the competition. Its staff monitor challenger broadcasts, record Heroic Spirits’ abilities, and assess threats 6.

The Bureau also protects successful challengers between rounds. Foreign countries have resorted to real-world assassination when unable to defeat their rivals inside the game, making military protection a central responsibility 7 27 28.

Effects on Society

• National solidarity: Citizens share the rewards and losses of their representative, producing unprecedented national unity 1.
• Public judgment: Challengers may be celebrated as heroes, while begging an enemy for mercy can bring condemnation and consequences for their families 16 27.
• Immigration pressure: Applications for Country L citizenship surge as Lin Xiaoran’s victories improve the country’s prospects 45.
• Changing strategy: Her first victory demonstrates the value of accumulating points rather than ending a round as quickly as possible; rival challengers adopt the same approach in the next instance 25 41.